


Play it Again, Sam

by iateyourheart



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iateyourheart/pseuds/iateyourheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are one half of an epic ‘will they, won’t they’ love affair. You know the answer to your question, because you are doomed to play this role.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play it Again, Sam

**Author's Note:**

> I don't ship finchel, but I wrote it once. So it goes. 
> 
> takes place in some weird netherworld around 2x21 "Funeral".

The parking lot carnivals are always the saddest. The stuffed animals are always a little less fluffy, the teeth to gum ratio in the employees is always very low, and there’s something about a Ferris wheel in the middle of Big Lots that just depresses the hell out of him. But, it’s the Saturday before prom and Quinn’s off finalizing the last half of her mission, so Finn agrees to spend an afternoon with Kurt and Blaine in the Big Lots parking lot.

He’s struggling to lick funnel cake powdered sugar from his fingertips when Kurt excitedly suggests they get their fortunes told.

“Dude, no. No way. My nana always said gypsy fortune tellers want to steal your soul as much as they want to steal your money.”

Though they’ve only been dating a handful of weeks, Kurt and Blaine have become scary good at mimicking each other’s expressions. This one (head titled, brows knit, mouth agape in puzzlement) is a look Finn has gotten used to seeing.

“…And on that _incredibly_ racist note, Blaine and I are getting our fortunes told. You’ll wait right here?” Kurt gestures sidelong towards the ring toss booth and says with a smirk, “I hope you have transient stab insurance.”

The inside of Madam Rosalie’s tent is heavy with incense smoke; imitation jasmine creeps up Finn’s nose and down his lungs, and while it’s true that Nana Hudson was just a wizened bigot who loved Bob Barker, it is also possible that he just paid ten bucks for the simple privilege of choking to death.

“Where’s the crystal ball?” Finn snickers as he takes a seat.

Madam Rosalie, sans shawls and moles, peers at him from over the top of thick rimmed glasses. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a severe bun and she gives a hard tug on the ends of her structured blazer before she pulls out the chair opposite his. Her look doesn’t say “I’ve opened my third eye” so much as it does “I have experience with QuickBooks”.

“You get one question…” she begins and Finn quickly cuts her off.

“It was ten bucks!”

“I suggest avoiding the obvious.” Madam frowns.

Finn rakes his sticky hands on his jeans, and leans back in the chair. “Okay…well, I guess I want to know if Quinn and I will win prom king and queen. It’s super important to her, and if she knows we’ve got it locked, then maybe she’ll relax some. I’ve got a bag filled with seventy-two buttons with my face on them – it’s creepy.”

“I told you to avoid the obvious.”

“Wait, how is that…?”

“You know,” she says.

Finn blinks. “I don’t, actually. According to Quinn, Lauren gives hope to the shut-ins and Twilight fans therefore they might be less likely to support the teenage ideal.”

“You are one half of an epic ‘will they, won’t they’ love affair. You know the answer to your question, because you are doomed to play this role.”

Jasmine burns his insides, and his mouth hangs open slightly. Madam Rosalie answers Finn’s next question before it has the opportunity to leave his tongue.

“You will,” she says. “But it’ll take awhile before the two of you get it right.” She pauses to relight a candle. “That will cost you an extra $2.50.”

Finn doesn’t really think too much about Madam Rosalie and what he may or may not know after that. He makes Kurt refund him $12.50. He reluctantly passes out buttons with his face on them.

**  
The dreams start because even though he meant it when he said Quinn was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, Jesse St. James had to come along and put his slick, dickhead hands all over Rachel, and screw Finn’s head up.

**

With Quinn refusing to acknowledge his presence for the rest of the night, the after prom party is kind of a bust. One Bud Light and ten unanswered texts later, Finn’s staring at his bedroom’s stucco ceiling.

Quinn just needs a day to come to terms with losing, he knows it, but the accusatory way she looked at him right before she stormed off annoyed him to no end. Okay, so picking a fight with Jesse wasn’t exactly Finn’s brightest moment – and yeah, it could be interpreted as a fit of jealousy, but it totally wasn’t. He cares about Rachel, she’s a friend, and it was in the service of their friendship that he chose to show that ass clown what was up. Quinn has nothing to worry about because even though he thinks Rachel’s pretty hot, she’s not beautiful like Quinn’s beautiful.

He could make a career out of staring at Quinn. It’s easy. When she smiles it’s like feeling the sun on his back on a warm summer’s day. He likes hearing her talk about their future (“we’ll get a little place across town, and I’ll teach third grade and you’ll run the tire shop…”), it’s nice. It’s simple.

Staring at Rachel? That was like dipping his whole hand in a bucket of ice water. When she smiles, he aches. When she and Kurt work on the feng shui for her future Manhattan brownstone, Finn can’t be anywhere near the room. It makes him a bit queasy. This is how he knows Rachel’s beauty is totally different; if she’s going around making dudes feel like they’re flying and drowning at the same time, then it’s no wonder Quinn is preferred.

Finn only had one beer, but his stomach was pretty empty so there’s a pleasant fuzzy feeling rolling from the top of his head to the tips of his toes and it’s making his vision blur at the edges. He doesn’t remember shutting his eyes, but ceiling stucco has given way to a wallpapered stairwell.

“Only two more flights to go!”

He takes the stairs slowly peering around the corners of a giant box marked ‘STUFFED ANIMALS’. “Remind me again why you couldn’t have stayed in the dorms?”

When they reach the top, and Finn can let the box temporarily rest on the threadbare carpet outside of APT 432, he drinks in the exasperated look on her face, and the way her fingers drum against her hips, and the way the sunlight from the hall window hits the top of her hair, and it’s like sticking his hand in ice water.

“I have to get the full struggling artist experience, Finn,” Rachel says as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m going to need a humble beginning to draw inspiration from. Sure, I could dine on Top Ramen in Weinstein Hall, but it wouldn’t be the same without the cockroaches and alarmingly high crime rate.”

They muddled through the difficult task of pulling the bed out of the wall, but the mattress with its mysterious stains proved to be rather uninviting. Instead, Finn and Rachel stand in the middle of her breadbox apartment, surrounded by the contents of her life. Her dads will return with Whoppers and fries any minute, but for now it’s just the two of them. Finn’s making sense memories out of the moment – the way the fabric of her dress feels against his fingers, the faint watermelon scent of her shampoo, the way her breath tickles against his ear when she speaks.

“I’ll call you every day. I promise. We can pinky swear if you want – I never break those. And there’s Skype; I’ll leave my webcam up all the time. It’ll be like I never left.”

The way she feels pressed against him, the salt on her skin when he kisses the curve of her neck. “Rach, you’ve got a whole week with me. Don’t start saying goodbye yet.”

“I know, I’m just…miserably thinking ahead.”

Finn wakes up to the sound of Kurt’s snoring.

**

(Rachel’s doing that thing she did last year where she inserts Jesse into every conversation, and it’s making the fact that Quinn’s talking to him again seem unimportant)

She sniffs loudly on the other end of the line, and it’s like a punch to the gut. Finn just feels so useless being holed up in a tire shop office in Lima while Rachel’s crying her heart out in New York. His dopey voice couldn’t possibly be enough.

“I’m not good enough. Sure, I was undisputedly the most talented performer at McKinley High, but we’re talking about an area of the country where the flag is a fashion accessory. It’s different here, I don’t stand out.”

“That’s not true.”

“The only callback I’ve gotten is for the chorus, Finn. Me, Rachel Berry, in the chorus.” She chokes back a sob, and he wonders if maybe Burt will give him an advance on his next check along with a few days off. “I’m coming home.”

“Rachel, I swear to God, if you show up here I’ll never speak to you again.” He pauses. “Okay, that’s not really true, but you can’t give up now. You’ve worked so hard, and I know you’ll regret it if you come back. Maybe not a year or ten from now, but someday you will and I’d give fucking anything to have you in the same zip code as me, but I won’t be that guy who told you to pack in your dream. I love you too much.”

He gets two Saturday detentions: one for sleeping in class, and one for saying the f-word.

**

“What the hell kind of name is Tomah anyway?”

Rachel smokes now; murder on her overall health, but not only will it give her voice an edge that says she’s familiar with life’s harder spaces, but it’ll aid in maintaining her weight. She tells him everyone does it. It’s just something that comes with the territory on Broadway. Tomah smokes like two packs a day.

“Don’t be like that, he’s just the director.”

She’s halfway through her second cigarette in twenty minutes, and she’s pacing around the rooftop garden.

“Yeah, and he just wants in your pants!”

“I can’t believe you! This is it, Finn. This—this is my shot, what I’ve been waiting my whole life for! How could you not be happy for me?”

Her eyes are beginning to swell with unshed tears, and for a moment Rachel’s just a girl in Lima with a big voice and a love of unicorn sweaters who believes he hung the moon and the stars. Her wrist juts outward with the cigarette dangling from her fingers, and her head tilts back in order to shoot second hand into the sky. Everything about her is close, but far away.

“I am happy,” he says. “Rachel, you playing Elphaba that’s huge – I couldn’t be more proud of you. But, I’m terrified of there not being a place for me anymore.”

When he comes to, Finn slips out of bed to change into pajamas that aren’t soaked through with sweat, and trudges downstairs. It’s early, he knows this because he finds Kurt doing pilates in the living room, and despite it being a Saturday the thought of going back to sleep is terrifyingly unappealing.

He flops down onto the couch with a bowl of Lucky Charms. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to laugh?”

Kurt scrambles out of plank position and shuts off the DVD. “I’m all ears,” he says.

“You promise?” Finn repeats.

“Of course.”

“This is going to sound stupid,” he says speaking around chewed bits of grain and marshmallow. “Remember when we had our fortunes told at the carnival?”

“…Yes.”

“Well, I think maybe Madam Rosalie opened up some other part of my brain. A freaky part.” Kurt’s gazing at him expectedly and Finn takes a deep breath before saying, “I can see the future” in all seriousness.

“ _Really_ now?”

“Dude, you promised!”

“I’m not laughing!” There’s a smile desperately tugging at the corners of Kurt’s lips, but he runs a quick hand over his face to wipe his features clean. “Okay, Finn. What makes you think you can see the future?”

“I’ve been having these dreams about me and…anyway, they’re really vivid, not at all like normal dreams, and Madam Rosalie said that I knew the answer to my own question because I’m a part of an epic love affair, and now I’m seeing it – and what I’m seeing, Kurt, it scares me to death, it’s gonna be hard, but I know how it’s going to end, so it’s kinda okay at the same time, you know? I don’t wanna hurt Quinn, but I’m going to eventually, and now I’m just wondering how long I should delay the inevitable.”

Climbing to his feet, Kurt sits down next to Finn with an understanding smile on his face. He snatches the spoon and scoops up as many marshmallows as he can.

“You probably already know the answer to that,” Kurt says.

**

What Sue said in her speech about being tied to someone? He gets it. See, he’s always had this feeling that he and Rachel are anchored together. When she moves, he moves and vice versa, and it’s like dancing without music.

**

Finn’s seen _Wicked_ fifty-two times. Rachel hasn’t starred in that show in about as many years as it’s been since they’ve talked on the phone, but there’s something about the moment when “One Short Day” kicks in, and the curtain rolls back to reveal all of that green that reminds him of the first time he saw it and Rachel on the Broadway stage. It makes his heart clench – he lives for this feeling; the three girlfriends he’s had in the last seven years were not so understanding about this fact.

It’s a cool September night, and Finn’s casually waiting against the barricade with a host of excited theatre fans who are already snapping pictures of the door. He bought a ticket to _Annie Get Your Gun_ , but couldn’t make himself go inside. He ended up at the stage door instead.

Rachel is luminous when she walks out. She’s been doing this for a while now, but if signing playbills and taking pictures is like going through the motions, she never lets on. Everyone gets a big smile. Everyone gets a hug. She means every thank you that falls from her lips. He can tell because he’s her anchor.

“Finn?” She trips over his name when she says it. Her eyes are wide like saucers. Her smile seems to light up her whole body.

“Hi,” he says. Finn swallows because it’s still hard to look at her.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know. Vacation. Touristy stuff.”

She skips the cast party and they go to her place. 59th and Park is a far cry from the apartment he helped her move into way back when. They watch a DVD of her performance in _Wicked_ because he wants to, and she falls asleep just before sunrise with her head on his shoulder.

Finn’s not going back to Ohio. He pinky swore.

**

When he sees Jesse kiss Rachel, it hurts, but it’s okay. Finn knows how everything is going to end.


End file.
